Taylor Swift breaks Wembley record as UK tour ends
Taylor Swift had finished the European leg of her Eras tour with a record-breaking show at Wembley Stadium that was packed full of surprises.
The pop star was joined on stage by Florence + The Machine and by Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff, rewarded fans with the premiere of a new music video and gave the first live rendition of her song So Long, London.
It was Swiftâs eighth concert at Wembley this summer â overtaking a record set by Michael Jackson in 1988.
âYou just made me the first solo artist to ever play Wembley eight times in a single tour,â she told fans. âWe will never, ever be able to thank you enough for it.â
The star also equalled the overall record for the most nights at Wembley Stadium on a single tour, set by Take That on their Progress Tour in 2011.
âThis is the bestâ
The starâs headline-dominating tour has criss-crossed Europe all summer; with the Wembley finale marking the 131st date of her two-year trek.
In the UK alone, she played to almost 1.2 million people, generating an estimated ÂŁ1bn for the countryâs economy.
A team of geophysicists in Edinburgh even recorded seismic waves generated by fans dancing at Murrayfield Stadium, which made the ground move by a maximum of 23.4 nanometres (nm) during the song Ready For It?
The London dates marked a high point, with Swift playing there more times than any other city on her itinerary.
âIâve always loved playing for you here in London, but this is the best,â she said during Tuesdayâs finale.
âIâve never had it this good before. Iâve never had a crowd thatâs so generous.
âYou seem to have memorised every single lyric of every single song, and thatâs a dream come true.â
She made the final show count, bringing out Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine to duet on the song Florida!!!
The British singerâs appearance triggered a wave of screams, as the two stars stood face-to-face, bellowing the chorus at each other at the end of a catwalk.
But any dedicated Swiftie knows that the real highlight of the Eras Tour is the acoustic set, where she plays two âsurprise songsâ that arenât a regular part of the setlist.
Last week, the star was joined by Ed Sheeran to play the songs Endgame and Thinking Out Loud.
For the last date at Wembley, she was assisted by Jack Antonoff â one of her core collaborators on Grammy-winning albums like Folklore and Midnights.
Together, they played a guitar-based medley of Death By A Thousand Cuts and Getaway Car.
To fansâ delight, the pair even staged a goofy reenactment of the Getaway Car recording session, where they wrote the songâs bridge in a 30-second burst of inspiration.
So Long, London played for the first time
Swift then continued the acoustic set at her piano, with the live debut of So Long, London, from her latest album The Tortured Poets Department.
Fans had been speculating for days about whether she would perform the track, which is widely believed to be about the end of her relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn last year.
The couple were believed to have lived in Primrose Hill during the pandemic, and Swift had written an earlier song, London Boy, in his honour.
But the six-year relationship fell apart last year, a month after Swift launched the Eras Tour in North America.
On So Long, London, she sings about the death of a London-based affair: âYou left me at the house by the Heath⊠And Iâm pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free.â
But the surprises didnât end with the acoustic set.
After the three-and-a-half-hour show ended and Swift had left the stage, she played a brand new music video on the stadiumâs big screens as fans started to make their way home.
Featuring brand new behind-the-scenes footage, it gave a glimpse into the massive scale of the Eras tour, with Swift travelling under the stage on train tracks and rehearsing the audacious âstage diveâ thatâs become a highlight of the concert.
The video was soundtracked by I Can Do It With A Broken Heart, a highlight of her recent album, which details how the opening leg of her tour was overshadowed by the emotional fallout of her break-up with Alwyn.
âAll the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting âMoreâ,â she sings in the pre-chorus.
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However, there has been an altogether more tragic backdrop to this summerâs shows.
On 29 July, three young girls were killed in a horrifying attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport.
A few weeks later, the star had to cancel three dates in Vienna after security forces foiled a potential attack on her fans at the Ernst Happel Stadium.
Swift is understood to have personally reached out to the victims of the Southport stabbing, and released a statement saying she was âat a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these familiesâ.
However, she has not referenced either incident on stage â preferring instead to focus on the sense of community that has become the defining characteristic of the Eras tour, where fans swap friendship bracelets and make new friendships every night.
The tour has even spawned a side-industry of spreadsheets, cataloguing every costume variation and surprise song thatâs been played along the way.
The countours of the show are so familiar to dedicated Swifties that they now join in with her scripted stage patter (âWelcome to the Eras Tour!â) as often as her song lyrics.
It adds a certain element of camp to the proceedings â like a sanitised pop remix of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
On stage at Wembley, Swift lapped up the adulation, saying it was âa privilege to do the thing I love, in front of any size crowd at allâ.
At an earlier show in Liverpool, she had also called the Eras Tour the âmost exhausting, all-encompassing but most joyful, most rewarding, most wonderful thing that has ever happened in my lifeâ.
The 34-year-old will now take a well-deserved break, before firing up the tour for one last jaunt across the US and Canada in the autumn.
When it reaches its final date in Vancouver this December, it will have made an estimated $2bn in ticket sales alone.
Without question, that will make it the biggest tour of all time â with revenues more than doubling Elton Johnâs farewell tour, which was the previous record holder.
The big question is: What will Swift do then?